Maps and Scans
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Scanned from the 1953 Odhams Road Atlas of Great Britain, these are some very interesting images of Britain just before the motorway network was started. It's a good idea to compare these with a modern-day road atlas. Apologies if these are hard to read, the book is quite small and hard to scan without bending pages around.
Click a thumbnail to see a larger version.
Preston, before even the Preston Bypass, which is now part of the M6. It is easy to see from this (with roads and railways) how Preston was (and is) a 'crossroads' of amazing importance. No wonder the people of Preston were fed up with all the traffic.
Before the M4, the way to get from Bristol to Newport and beyond was via Gloucester. I'm not joking; the next bridge north of the Severn Crossings is still in the middle of Gloucester. There was of course a ferry service crossing nearer Bristol until the bridges arrived.
The Severn Bridge (M48) crosses at Beachley towards the top of this picture, the Second Severn Crossing somewhere around the rail tunnel further south. The M5 is also clearly missing from here. Apologies for the image quality, this was across the fold in the middle of the page!
North London before the M1 and A1(M) messed things about. Two main observations here: the A6 gets further south than Luton, but still doesn't reach London as the rest of the single-digits A1-A5 do. Second, there are two A1's! Both roads running south from the A1/A6 junction are labelled "1". They rejoin just below the bottom of this image and continue as one A1 to the City.
No M25, no M23, but a decidedly relaxed south London bypass in the A25. Other A-roads roughly follow the M25's present route, including the A128 and A414.
Pre-Humber Bridge, the A15 ran to New Holland, where the ferry ran from. It continued in the middle of Hull, running between the north bank and the city centre. Today it has been rerouted along the B1218, which makes it run a much smoother course to Barton-on-Humber.
With thanks to Michael Mulvany for information on this page.
